A Small Thing
Rating: T
Who: Tony/various OFCs
Summary: There are many ways to run.

--

Smoke and noise and muffled conversation. Drinks that sweat along with circumstantial strangers. He maneuvers confidently in these places and never worries about the cost.

It doesn't take long.

"Hi," she said and introduced herself, "I'm Michelle."

Tony smiled (when didn't he?) as his eyes trickled down her body. She was probably in her mid-twenties, a tall brunette with a pendant resting against the hollow of her throat. He thought if he knew this woman at all she'd be beautiful.

These are the only situations in which he ever second-guesses himself. Later, her thumbs have already slid into his belt loops, and by this time it's too late.

--

(Another time) her name is Erin and she smells like vanilla. He stroked her hip through her gray skirt and tried not to think of the corpse he'd seen seven hours earlier.

"What brings you here?" she asked.

"Nothing," he said into his drink. "Nothing."

--

He's breathless, ready to burst with this always unidentifiable something. It pulls at his jaw and the muscles between his shoulder blades, only being understood as the sound of blood rushes to his ears. He's made numerous clumsy attempts at satisfying it, but this is not what he struggles with.

"Tina?" he repeated without emotion. "My favorite name."

--

The same thing that holds him together holds him back. He wants to tell this woman, this new woman: I wish we could talk instead, but he can already hear her body rustling beneath his sheets and her pants attending to his pillows.

"I have to go." He lightly ran his hand down Renée's side and said very quietly, "Early day tomorrow."

He's suave enough to curl her edges and so she believes it.

"Call me," she said, pressing her number into his palm.

He told her, "I can't wait," and smiled.

--

Tony wants to cry or at the very least put his hand over his mouth to make sure he's still breathing. Instead, he lets his fingertips graze the wall outside her apartment as he became accustomed to the early morning light and his increasingly crooked backbone.

--

The mirror behind the bar holds the reflection of a blonde in a power suit. She's drinking a white wine spritzer and has a silver bracelet on her left wrist. She notices her reflection and then notices Tony.

Afterward, she's smoothing back her yellow hair, preparing to begin again, and her neck falls back like she's offering her life to him. He turns away from her. Moonlight is puddled underneath her bedroom window.

"Just think what would've happened if neither of us noticed that mirror," she said. "You could've sat there all night."

"How about that," Tony responded.

He knew the mirror had nothing to do with it.

--

"I'm Tony," he said to the ghost of a woman that stood before him.

He almost believes it.